Today marks the centenary of the birth of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
During the Great Patriotic War he was a member of the partisan detachment of the Western Front. In November 1941, near the village of Petrishchevo, Zoya was captured by German troops. She did not betray her colleagues despite her torture, she was executed and the Germans abused her body.
In modern Russia, they have repeatedly tried to discredit Zoya’s feat, but he and she turned out to be stronger than these “tortures.”
And during interrogation in 1941, despite the atrocities of the Nazis, Kosmodemyanskaya did not give her real name and said that she was Tanya. We first learned about her feat thanks to an article in Pravda, which Pyotr Lidov titled “Tanya.” It was January 27, 1942, the same year that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Why Tanya? Zoya chose it in memory of Tatyana Solomakha, who was executed by the White Guard during the Civil War for her clandestine activities.
After the release of Petrishchev in early 1942, an investigation was carried out, during which it was established that before the execution, Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya uttered the following words: “Citizens! Do not stand, do not look We must “Help the Red Army fight and, for my death, our comrades will take revenge on the German fascists. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated. “She also addressed the German soldiers, calling on them to surrender and declaring: “You cannot outweigh everyone, there are 170 million of us.”
After this, the invaders executed Zoya and left her body on the gallows as a warning to the local residents. German soldiers repeatedly abused her body. Only in early January 1942 did the Germans allow local residents to bury Zoya on the outskirts of the village. Later, her body was transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.
After the publication, people wrote, talked and drew about Zoya’s feat. Thus, to the editorial office of the newspaper “Pionerskaya Pravda”, as well as to other publications for children and youth that continued their work during the war years, children sent drawings, poems about the war and caricatures of German soldiers.
Eighth grade student V. Arkhipovsky’s drawing “The Death of “Tanya”” depicts the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Obviously, the drawing was made shortly after Lidov’s article appeared in Pravda.
Children’s drawings about the war, including this one, dedicated to Zoya’s feat, are part of a set of documents collected during the war for the exhibition “Komsomol in the Patriotic War”, which was held in the Historical Museum. And the drawing of the schoolboy Arkhipovsky is preserved in the Russian Archives of Socio-Political History.
